Stronger environmental laws must be more than a promise

On the Northern Beaches, we don’t have to look far to understand what’s at stake in the fight to protect our environment. We live alongside bushland, lagoons, and coastlines that are home to both unique wildlife and marine life. Each day, we stroll our beaches, surf our waves, or walk through bush tracks that hum with cicadas and the laughs of local kookaburras. 

We love our natural environment, and we’ll fight hard to protect it, like we did to stop drilling for oil and gas off our coastline. But it shouldn’t be so hard. People and communities all around Australia are fighting every day to protect the places and native animals they love – but they are often let down by our weak national environment laws. 

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act created 25 years ago was meant to be a fundamental safeguard for nature. But for 25 years, it has failed, and we now have 19 ecosystems across the country on the brink of collapse. 

Since the Act was introduced, more than 7.7 million hectares of threatened species’ habitat have been bulldozed and over 740 fossil fuel projects have been approved, and continue to be, despite their proven role in driving climate change. Right now, over 1,918 Aussie species are under threat, with over half at risk of extinction. 

It has been 5 years since a damning review of our national environment laws which unequivocally called for urgent reform. During this delay by both major parties, habitat destruction and extinctions have continued apace. 

Australian nature is under threat – from the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and the devastating marine heat wave in South Australia, to the relentless land clearing around the country and fossil fuel mine approvals. One of the major flaws in the laws is the carve out for native forest logging in state forests so that this activity is exempt from the laws. 

Now the laws are again up for debate and reform. I’ll be calling for strong legislative changes, including: 

• Ending native forest logging: repeal the Regional Forestry Agreement exemptions and close loopholes that let industries bulldoze our native forests. 
• Establishing strong rules: with upfront protections to stop threatened species and ecosystems being destroyed. 
• Ensuring the EPA is independent; a genuinely independent EPA director and board, so that we can trust decisions are free from industry lobbying and political influence. 
• Prevent further climate destruction: ensure a project’s impact on the climate is considered. 

The 2021 State of the Environment Report made it clear: climate change is supercharging environmental destruction. It is illogical in 2025, when we’ve already passed 1.5 degrees of warming, to create an EPA without the power to assess projects for climate harm. Without a mechanism for our nature laws to take the impact of a project on the climate into consideration, it will be doing a vastly incomplete job. 

Here on the Northern Beaches, we know how precious our environment is, and I will continue to fight hard to protect our incredible nature – now and into the future.